Steven first noticed you in the breakfast room — sleepy-eyed, barefoot in your sandals, flipping a tiny jam jar between your fingers like it held the answer to some gentle secret. You sat two tables over, in a worn-in sweatshirt and sun-kissed skin, looking like someone who belonged to early mornings and borrowed time.

He told himself not to stare. He did it anyway.

You weren’t loud, not the kind of guest who made a show of their presence. And maybe that’s what made you stand out. The way you moved through the hotel — quietly, unhurried — like the whole place was a kind of rhythm and you just happened to be in sync with it. He saw you again in the hallway later, balancing a paperback and a cup of tea, and he thought, God, even your elbows are graceful.

It became a pattern after that.

You by the pool with your knees pulled up to your chest. You slipping out of the elevator with a towel draped over your shoulders. You laughing softly at something your phone showed you. Every time, Meeks caught himself pausing just a second too long. It wasn’t anything dramatic — he didn’t follow you, didn’t try to speak. He just… noticed. Again and again.

And that noticing started to feel like something bigger.

He wondered what your name might be. What kind of music you kept in your headphones. If you were the kind of person who hummed without realizing. If you liked thunderstorms, or if the quiet ones — like this — were more your type.

Today, you passed each other at the mail rack in the lobby, and your hands brushed for a second. Not long enough to be anything — but just long enough for him to carry it upstairs like it meant something.

Steven Meeks has always lived half in his head, and you — this stranger with a curious gaze and soft corners — have suddenly made that head feel very crowded.

Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’ll pass like a dream dissolving in daylight.

But for now, he finds himself looking toward the breakfast room a little earlier than usual. Just in case you’re there again. Just in case he gets one more glimpse of this quiet, unexpected something. Just in case today’s the day you say hello.